2010-08-20: Bat on a hot tin roof
Summary: Batwoman and Sabra take down a methlab with possible terrorists connections. They didn't start the day working together. Participants: Sabra and Batwoman Rating: PG-13 for punching Location: Near Gotham University, Gotham The nights in Gotham are super-dark, due to a lot of busted streetlights. Even here, near the campus--it's dark. This serves the purposes of many superstitious and cowardly lots quite well, really. There's often a lot of crossover among criminal elements, also. Terrorist orgs often make money by dealing drugs. Lots of drugs. And college students have money for such. Sabra has no time for drugs, but she has time for power criminal fugitives reputed to be in the area--in one particular brownstone in a row of like houses, full of college students except for the one, which is always quiet and dark while the others party, on a Friday. Sabra hovers in the air, overlooking the building. "I'm in view," she says quietly to her radio. Inside, several nervous, twitchy men play poker while two others attend something that looks like a still, but isn't. One of the men is much bigger than the others, sleek and muscled, wearing a black leather vest and pants. Another is possessed of a long mane of hair, tied back loosely with a leather thong, and shades he refuses to take off even in the basement dimness. All of the men are olive-complected, semitic. Like Sabra herself. "I'm in view," another darkly garbed, civic-minded jewes--heroine murmurs from a rooftop adjacent the block's conspicuous dark spot. A long, black cloak is wrapped around her entire body, and if it weren't for the red hair spilling from the back of her black, pointed mask, she might manage to blend perfectly with the shadows she's watching from. She's clutching the insides of the cape, waiting for her moment; her lenses are magnifying the view, compensating for the darkness of the rooftop and their room both. There's a very quiet hum and a sleek, tapered shape somewhere in the skies overhead; it's on a different side of the building from Sabra, but it might be dimly visible as a collection of red reflective surfaces and dark metal. "Code Seven Dash Three Dash Four Eight Mike," she murmurs; within that dark shape, lights flash. Monitors light; in its underbelly, machinery whirrs to life. "One shot; fire." In the next second, an amber streak is racing towards the brownstone's window; a split-second later, it's crashed through the glass and filled the room with harmless, if obnoxiously thick smoke. Batwoman, meanwhile, is running towards the edge of the roof; as soon as she hits it, she'll leap clear and spread her cape to glide across the gap and into the broken out window, where maybe, hopefully, she'll be able to take advantage of gambling terrorists in disarray. "What? Shit." The words are actually in Hebrew, but they are in response to a crashing noise and shouts from inside. "I am going in." Sabra reports. She doesn't bother with anything so mundane as /windows/. She just busts through a lower story wall after a short flight, and then bursts down the stairs in a brief and sudden acceleration that destroys less. The terrorists are indeed in disarray from all the noise and sudden insertion of /bats/ into their house. They thought they had it covered, had guys who were friends of friends of friends who would keep this from happening...! Guns are brandished suddenly from the waistbands of three of the men below, while the big man just /stands up/ and the long-haired fellow...well, he sort of giggles throws his cards down. "Check!" he calls out. Batwoman hits the ground inside in a crouch; the shock is travelling up her legs, but the sensation is much less uncomfortable than it ought to be, probably because her costume cost at least as much as the brownstone she's infiltrating, if not more. As she rises, she releases her cape in favour of quickly slapping a rebreather on over her nose and mouth, as it might be embarrassing to be brought low by smoke inhalation from her own distraction; with /that/ out of the way, she's free to flick a handful of tiny, bat-shaped objects with razor sharp edges towards one of the gun-wielding criminals; they're almost dart like in scale, despite having nothing in common shape-wise. "Two pair," she flatly says for the giggly terrorist's benefit. The razor-bat-darts swirl around the unfortunate gunman and bring him low, screeching about bats and the pain caused by a dozen or more razor cuts drawn by tiny wings, in rapid succession. The swirling, the darting, is perhaps in equal measure for his subdual--it is enough. The giggling man frowns at the Bat's response and points his hand at her, abruptly glowing. "Inner fire, flush," he mutters, releasing a blast of pure heated energy, unwelcome on a hot night like this--did we mention the place has no AC? It doesn't, and the basement is the only tolerable room. This leaves space for Sabra to fly down and take in the situation. She enters, takes hold of one terrorists's (in her eyes) gun, and simply yanks it from his hand. Her gaze sweeps over the room, over Batwoman, and she frowns. "Who are you?" It's directed at her, the only other woman present, even while she prepares to deal with the others, now swarmed with two targets. It's actually pretty lucky that Mr. Gigglesworth actually says something; without that cue, she would have been caught full on by the heat blast with nothing but her costume's heat/flame retardant properties to protect her, and when dealing with a metahuman, it's difficult to tell how sufficient that really is. Of course, /with/ the cue, her only advantage is being able to pull her cape up to act as a second layer of anti-heat protection; it's effective in that she doesn't, like, burn up or anything, but the impact against her forearm and heat that still sinks through are both enough to stagger her a bit; as she draws back to try and regroup and, more importantly, try and keep abreast of things in case she needs to evade or something, she palms a fully sized batarang for when she's together enough to actually throw it. "Later," she gruffly replies, eyes briefly darting to Sabra before returning to the terrorists. She probably should have--noticed a flying Jew suddenly inserting herself into the situation, but well, she was busy not being burned alive. Sabra is pretty obvious flying Jew. There isn't any attempt at concealment, and she's dressed for work right now. She hisses at the response, but she knows at least /something/ about Gotham--a bat-pretender wouldn't last long, right? Or this one seems to be fighting her enemies, anyway. She launches into another one, punching a simple terrorist in the gut and doubling him over--and that is when she takes a fist from the big man, whom she assumed to be just big, not metahuman--and flies into a nearby wall, cratering for a moment. The heat blast doesn't incinerate Batwoman, and the giggly guy responds with a truncated laugh, "hee hee he..ee?" His hand starts to glow again as he favors the other woman with a quizzical look. The two still attendants are frantically trying to do something, put out fires, stuff, but they have no extinguisher and the smoke is burning everyone's eyes. "Yes," Batwoman murmurs as she locks eyes with the giggler. "I /am/ flame-retardant; tell /everybody/." Her right hand flashes out from her cape, then, sending the batarang racing towards the man's temple; it's blunt rather than being sharpened, as it might be awkward to take a headshot with a razor sharp weapon. As soon as the object leaves her hand, she's in motion; she doesn't know if he'll shoot the thing out of the sky, and moreover, there are still guys with guns who might try and shoot at her; she can't /afford/ to be still, and so she's sprinting across the room, towards one of the scrambling attendants, cape swirling all the while to obscure her all the way. "If the meta is still conscious," she calls to Sabra without checking, "Fix it--he's throwing heat. It's very dangerous--there's no telling if this building is up to any kind of fire code." The man giggles, continues giggling, it seems to be his thing--until the batarang impacts his temple and sends him staggering, and knocks off his shades. "The light!" he screeches. "It's burning! Augh, god!" He wavers his hand out in Batomwan's general direction, but really it's aimed at the meth lab over yonder; it starts to glow. Sabra frowns as she extracts herself from the rubble of the wall. Is she being given orders by this woman? Still, his hand /is/ glowing and she saw him fire before--she launches herself, and clocks him across the other temple in time to avoid the blast. Just in time to get hit by the big man again, through the stairs this time. Now all the fire exits are blocked. "Thank y--" Batwoman quirks her head towards Sabra, who is flying through a staircase; sighing, she turns her attention to the big man and reaches behind herself. "This isn't safe for you," she coolly notes as she gingerly lays her hand on the small firearm concealed in her back utility pouch. "You've blocked all the exits off. Do you know much about handling meth? Do you know what could happen, if the apparatii exploded? You would be trapped." As she speaks, her eyes are scanning his body for something that looks remotely like a weak point, a vulnerabilty, something that isn't a knot of hard, impenetrable muscle. She can't really find anything like that, at least nothing that wouldn't be likely to kill him; instead, she fixes on his legs. "Surrender--I promise I'll" Rather than finish her thought, she pitches herself abruptly to the side, flattening out in the air like a John Woo protaganist; the gun comes free as she flies, and before she touches the ground, several rubber rounds are fired towards the ball of his ankle, his achilles tendon, the hollow in the back of a knee--anything that might bring him down before he turns her into a smear on the ground. The big man flinches--flinches several times from Batwoman's rounds. He is used to being basically invulnerable to normal fire, not dealing with targets carefully targeting his vital points. A noise of dismay escapes him, and he stumbles, staggers aside, brushing one of his comrades down with a casual gesture in seeking his balance. "MotherFUCK" he swears. "that fuckin' HURT you bitch--!" This isn't backed up by any immediate reprisal, though one of the meth attendants /does/ try--for the reasons Batwoman mentioned. He's afraid for his lab. He's afraid for his equipment. He tries to smash her head with a board when she stops moving, anxious gasps marking his breathing. Sabra picks her way free of stairs, and looks kind of pissed-off. A deft roll-through brings Batwoman to her feet just as soon as she lands; of course, she's immediately thrown into having to contend with a guy with a board, but since he's just a /normal/ guy with a board, it's not /so/ bad. "Stop," she commands as she smoothly sways to the side to allow a blow to pass her by. "Stop, right now," she reiterates while ducking beneath another swing; as she extends her legs to stand upright again, she hops a little to position herself directly opposite the meth still, with the attendant between them. "Stop," she says one more time as she springs several feet away; this time, her pistol extends; there's no mistaking that she isn't aiming at the attendant. "or I will shoot; my partner and I don't care about fire exits. It's your choice." Sabra pauses in an immediate advance towards the big guy. He's already been shot, several times, and the report of the pistol doesn't tell her it was rubber rounds--though her team will likely figure that out later. The brandishing of the gun now, however, conflicts with her intelligence on the Bat-clan. It conflicts with the intelligence of this group, too, and guns begin to clatter to the floor one after another, all the members dropping to their knees. The giggling man is still softly moaning something about the light and clutching his head; he's pretty well done-for. The big guy is the only one who looks uncertain, and he provides Sabra with a target for her rage. She flies abruptly forward, with a simple neuronic command of her cowl, and strikes him with a sturdy blow to the jaw. He staggers, and takes another smack to the dome. That's enough to bow him. "Fire exits indeed." She finally voices to Batwoman. The cuffs come out when the guns hit the ground, and as efficiently as she can, Batwoman moves about the room to slap them on, kicking firearms way away from grabby hands wherever possible. When she's done, the pistol is pocketed, replaced by a grapple gun; for now, it remains concealed beneath her slightly singed cape as she turns towards Sabra. "No surprise flyers, I guess," she lowly states. "That might have been a problem. Thank you for helping." "You...are welcome." Sabra finally states, looking at the room and the occupants, now being neatly cuffed. She moves to assist--she has plastic zip-tie cuffs, which are not the kindest, but are effective and easy to carry. "You are Bat...girl? Lady?" She asks, to establish, to gather intelligence. The big man is not cuffed. It would be a waste of time. Instead he is simply watched. "Woman," she corrects; her ruby-red lips press into a line of discontent at the initial attempt of 'girl', because really, she is a little old for 'girl'. Despite her (near-negligible) offense, she's able to quickly check around herself to try and get a sense of the space now that she isn't fighting in it. "Smaller than I was expecting, but not by much, I guess; do you need an ambulance? You were hit very, very hard, from the sound of it and the look of the big one." Sabra lifts her chin at the suggestion of an ambulance. "I do not. I am Sabra." Her costume was damaged a bit, but she in truth seems to support her claim; someone might have hit her a couple times were she a normal woman, but not into a wall and through a staircase. "I serve the cause. Two of these are wanted terrorists and I doubt that the rest dwell in innocence. Should you prefer to retire, I shall await the authorities." Since she's registered and legit and all. "Batwoman," she adds, acknowleding the name. "Sabra," is Batwoman's succinct reply. That, and the soft 'fffthpt' of her grapple line hitting the edge of that roof hole once it's pointed upwards; hopefully, abruptly ziplining out of a crime scene is all the answer she needs to give regarding who should handle dealing with the authorities and who should be a reclusively nocturnal vigilante. Answer enough indeed. Sabra studies the space of Batwoman's absence almost as thoroughly as she studies the bound men in the space with her. "We're done here. Move in." She says to her radio. "Bring a ladder." She adds, eyeing the busted stairs. Her arms are crossed. She waits with foot tapping. Batwoman, hm. Gotham is a strange place to operate indeed. Category:Logs Category:Gotham